Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Educators are among the first targets of tyrants. They also take the lead in the fight for democracy

Education International

On this May Day, Education International stands in solidarity with trade unionists worldwide standing up for democracy, human rights, and social justice. The rise of right-wing and authoritarian politicians globally is an active threat to union values, and to the working people and vulnerable communities unions defend. Arrogant billionaires are seizing control of governments, economies, and lives. They view democracy, laws, and workers’ rights as obstacles to be bent or broken. As the voice and force of teachers and education support personnel, we also denounce the ongoing attacks on public education, academic freedom, and the rights of marginalized communities, including migrant students and LGBTI+ individuals. These attacks undermine the right to education and the values we uphold.

Why judges blocked the Trump admin’s school DEI crackdown [Audio]

Cory Turner, NPR

Three federal judges, in Maryland, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C., ruled Thursday that the Trump administration had overstepped when it ordered the nation’s schools to stop all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as well as classroom teaching the administration might consider discriminatory. For the moment, this means the U.S. Department of Education cannot make good on its threat to punish noncompliant districts by withholding vital federal funding, including dollars that help K-12 schools serve low-income students and children with disabilities.

ACLU sues to halt Trump administration attacks on Head Start child-care program

Kate Sequiera, Los Angeles Times

The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of six early childhood organizations, including one in California, sued the Trump administration Monday to halt the dismantling of Head Start and restore cuts to the program, alleging that the actions required congressional approval.

The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Washington, also alleged that the administration’s directive to strip the program of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts is “unconstitutionally vague,” violates the free speech of its teachers and does not provide enough guidance for providers to know what must be done to avoid losing federal funding. The DEI allegations come days after federal judges blocked a Trump administration directive that threatened to withhold federal funds from K-12 public schools that did not comply with its anti-DEI guidance. The federal judge who made the initial ruling said the administration was unclear in its definition of DEI.

Language, Culture, and Power

California school districts spend millions on policing, with little scrutiny

Thomas Peele and Daniel Willis, EdSource

Many California school districts pay cities and counties millions of dollars a year to put law enforcement officers on campuses, moving tax dollars allocated for education to policing with little oversight by elected school boards, an EdSource investigation found. Not every district has what are commonly called school resource officers. Many call 911 if they need help, and 20 have their own police departments. Others contract with cities and counties, which provide resource officers from the ranks of local police, sheriffs, and probation departments. California doesn’t collect data on school policing. Using public records act requests, EdSource obtained policing contracts from 89 districts, nearly 10% of the state’s total.

How Corporal Punishment in Southern Schools Fuels Educational Inequality and Legislative Harm

Ceara Johnson, Dallas Weekly

One thing is clear. Data shows that corporal punishment in Southern schools is pervasive. In the 2017-2018 school year, alone, Scott County School District in Mississippi had 1,746 incidents of corporal punishment. More than a third of the students in this district are Black. What’s more uncanny is that these incidents aren’t just isolated to Mississippi. There are more than a dozen states that still actively practice corporal punishment in schools. And the practice has been deemed constitutional since the late 1970s. What happens when we allow educators to put their hands on our children? What do these kids grow up to achieve? The short answer: we aren’t completely sure. Yet. So why is this practice allowed to persist in our public and private schools, despite it being banned in school districts in most northern states?

“It’s like my second home.” On the Potential of a Critical Pedagogy of Multicultural Incorporation

Anna Lund, Didem Oral, Eija Aalto, Helen Packwood, and Natasa Pantic, Frontiers

This article examines the changing dynamics of school cultures in Nordic contexts (seven schools in Finland, Scotland, and Sweden). As societies increasingly become superdiverse, school leaders and teachers can participate in perspective-taking and critical reflection, which foster a deeper understanding of differences and greater openness in interactions within educational contexts. Everyday school experiences go beyond academic performance, reflecting the coexistence of society. Young people growing up encounter different school cultures and are thus equipped with different tools to learn about collective life and how to imagine solidarity. The article introduces the concept of critical pedagogy of multicultural incorporation (CPMI). The super-diverse Magnolia School in Sweden, located in a stigmatized neighborhood, shows that the pedagogical strategies of CPMI (recognition, fostering an awareness of structural barriers, decolonizing the curriculum and representation) matter to racial and ethnic minority students and their sense of belonging, cross-cultural socialization, and academic achievement.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Decreased likelihood of schooling as a consequence of tropical cyclones: Evidence from 13 low- and middle-income countries

Renzhi Jing, Sam Heft-Neal, Zetianyu Wang, and Eran Bendavid, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Recovery after natural disasters is a crucial global development concern. Here, we study the underexplored impacts of tropical cyclones on schooling in low- and middle-income countries. Using data from 5.4 million individuals across 13 countries, we find that children exposed to tropical cyclones during preschool age have a significantly higher likelihood of no schooling, especially among girls. The effects are more pronounced in less cyclone-prone areas, possibly due to less resilience. Between 2000 and 2020, we estimate that 79,000 children did not start school, and 1.1 My of schooling were reduced due to tropical cyclones in the study countries. These findings underscore the need for interventions to protect schooling as climate change may increase the severity of tropical cyclones.

Teaming Up to Tailor Climate Education for Indigenous Communities

Saima May Sidik, EOS

Research shows that communities are best able to mitigate the effects of climate change when they can work alongside scientists on adaptation plans. Hanson et al. recently extended this finding to Indigenous communities in the Colorado Plateau, including members of the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. To learn more about the qualities that make climate education most accessible to these groups, the researchers conducted a series of listening circles, interviews, and consultations with Indigenous peoples and Westerners with extensive experience working in Indigenous communities. They collaborated with members of the Nature Conservancy’s Native American Tribes Upholding Restoration and Education, or NATURE, program, which aims to equip Indigenous college students with natural resource management skills.

Gaza media office says at least 65,000 children hospitalised due to severe malnutrition

Middle East Monitor

The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip accused Israel on Monday of intensifying the suffering of Palestinian children as a result of the ongoing genocide and the oppressive blockade that the occupation state has imposed on the enclave. This has led to the spread of severe malnutrition among more than 65,000 children out of a total of 1.1 million suffering from daily hunger, said the GMO. “Israel uses starvation and deprivation as a systematic weapon of war against civilians, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” explained the media office. “The blockade and the ongoing closure of crossings have led to a catastrophic deterioration in health conditions and the spread of severe malnutrition, especially among children and infants.”

Access, Assessment, Advancement

In These Times Honors Academic Workers

Fatima Jalloh, In These Times

The labor movement in higher education far predates Trump’s attacks. The past decade has seen professors, adjuncts and grad students organizing with more than a dozen unions, including the AAUP, AFSCME, AFT, SEIU, CWA, NEA, UE, the Teamsters and more. According to a 2024 report from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, unionization rates among grad students leapt 133% since 2012 and faculty unions grew 7.5%, with strong new organizing among adjuncts and contingent faculty. And that’s before the huge wins of 2024: Organizing by UE culminated in six first contracts covering 18,000 academic workers. Another 15,000 higher education workers in six units secured their first UAW contracts in 2024. At the University of Minnesota, hard-won reforms allowed access to unionization for more than 23,000 workers and opened the door for grad students to win their first collective bargaining agreement.

Reaffirming Higher Education as a Public Good

Eleanor J. Bader, The Progressive

College and university faculty, staff, researchers, and students are fed up. And for good reason: high-handed administrative and government attacks on curriculum, faculty governance, and tenure; the recent revocation of more than 1,700 previously authorized visas—hundreds of which have been restored—issued to international scholars and students; complicity between university policymakers and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE); and restrictions on how race, gender, sexuality, and history can be taught. In response to the Trump Administration’s assault on education, the second National Day of Action for Higher Education on April 17 brought tens of thousands of academic activists together to voice their opposition to the administration’s actions and affirm higher education as a public good. 

Student Debt Collections Restart on May 5. Here’s What to Know.

Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times

After a five-year reprieve, the Trump administration will restart forced collections on federal student loans in default, which could include garnishing a portion of borrowers’ paychecks.

With collections in place, the last piece of the student loan machinery has been turned back on, officially ending pandemic-era relief, which began when President Trump paused federal student loan payments in March 2020. The Biden administration extended the freeze several times, and payments resumed only in October 2023. But the rules were relaxed for the first year of repayment, and borrowers weren’t penalized for slipping behind until last fall.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

When kids are evicted, they often lose both home and school

Moriah Balingit, AP News

Since her birth 10 years ago, Mackenzie Holmes has rarely called one place home for long. There was the house in Houston owned by her grandmother, Crystal Holmes. Then, after Holmes lost her Southwest Airlines job and the house, there was the trio of apartments in the suburbs — and three evictions. Then another rental, and another eviction. Then motels and her uncle’s one-bedroom apartment, where Mackenzie and her grandmother slept on an inflatable mattress. Finally, Crystal Holmes secured a spot in a women’s shelter, so the two would no longer have to sleep on the floor. With nearly every move came a new school, a new set of classmates, and new lessons to catch up on.

Detroit’s lack of affordable housing pushes families to the edge – and children sometime pay the price

Meghan Wilson and John Kuk, The Conversation

As outside temperatures dropped to the low- to mid-teens Fahrenheit on Feb. 10, 2025, two children died of carbon monoxide toxicity in a family van parked in a Detroit casino parking garage. We are political scientists who study urban and housing public policies, and in the months since this tragedy, we took a deep look at the trends in homelessness and housing policies that foreshadowed the events of that night. One important trend is that the number of homeless children in the city reached a record high in 2024. This is true even though the overall numbers of people experiencing homelessness in the city is declining overall. According to the Point-in-Time count, 455 children were experiencing homelessness in Detroit on Jan. 31, 2024, up from 312 the year before. The count captures data for one night each year.

Remove the Barriers to Solving Youth Homelessness

Destiny Jackson, The Imprint

It’s easy to talk about policy in theory — in numbers, proposals, and headlines. But when you’ve lived through its failures, you know those policies are more than abstract debates. They shape real lives. Every time funding is cut or a bill fails to pass, a young person — often a teenager just trying to make it through school — is left to figure things out alone. I was one of them. In high school, I experienced homelessness while juggling AP classes, part-time jobs, and college applications. I was also living with Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition I’ve managed since I was 3 years old. I had to calculate my insulin, monitor my blood sugar levels, and keep emergency snacks on hand — all while not knowing where I’d sleep at night. The stress of not having a stable home directly affected my health. I lived in a youth shelter for a time, and I still remember waking up at 3 a.m. to treat a dangerous low, wondering what would happen if I ever ran out of insulin. 

Democracy and the Public Interest

Learning to Verify

Mike Caulfield, Sam Wineburg, American Educator

The video is shocking. Two women approach a historic painting in London’s National Gallery and seemingly destroy it. As orange goop streaks down the painting, they read a statement about climate change and glue themselves to the gallery wall. Tweeting the video to his 18,000 followers, British journalist Damien Gayle reveals that the activists “have thrown tomato soup”1 on Vincent van Gogh’s beloved Sunflowers. Within 24 hours, the video racked up 40 million views. Reaction was swift. For a rare moment, the political left and the political right found common cause. Destruction of art, as one tweeter summarized, “represents a repudiation of civilisation and the achievements of humanity.”2 The sentiment received about 10,000 retweets. Replies and retweets advocated long prison sentences for the women or, van Gogh–like, cutting off their ears. All this outrage and concern missed a crucial fact: Sunflowers was behind glass.

A new documentary checks out the many ways libraries are a ‘Free For All’ [Audio]

David Bianculli, Fresh Air

The new PBS Independent Lens documentary about America’s public library system arrives with a very clever, two-edged title: Free for All: The Public Library. The “Free for All” part refers, of course, to the beauty and generosity of the library system, which lends books, for free, to virtually anyone. But “Free for All” also refers to the many fights surrounding that idealistic institution: fights against segregated libraries; the banning of books; tax cuts and local library closures; targeted reductions of federal funds; and, quite recently and famously, “Drag Queen Story Hour.”

Lawmaker seeks new way to outlaw threats against California schools and places of worship

Denise Amos, Cal Matters

An Inland Empire legislator wants to make it easier to penalize people who make threats affecting schools or places of worship. The proposal by state Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, has stirred up broad opposition as well as support from dozens of organizations. It pits police, prosecutors and school employee groups against youth and disability advocates and the ACLU. Existing law already says it is a crime to make a threat about something that could result in death or great bodily injury to someone. If the threat is “unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific” and causes “sustained fear” in a person, the crime is a misdemeanor or a felony. Rubio, a former public school teacher at Baldwin Park and Monrovia school districts, said she championed this bill to highlight the location of the threat, rather than the victim of the threat. She said that phoned-in or texted threats often waste time and money for schools and first responders and traumatize people.

Other News of Note

Between Fires in Los Angeles and Fascism in America

Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer & Hope

No amount of words or pictures can adequately capture the magnitude of the devastation caused by the Eaton fire, and nothing could have prepared me for seeing my old neighborhood of West Altadena reduced to rubble. The burned-out cars, twisted and discolored metal, thick toxic ash, lone chimneys and concrete porches, trees charred beyond the point of regeneration, appeared to extend as far as the eye could see. Accompanied by the brilliant photographer Gabriella Angotti-Jones, I drove up and down familiar streets taking in wreckage while sharing tales of legendary house parties, loving neighbors, prom, jam sessions, my mom and little sister wearing flowers plucked from our yard in their hair, our garage turned artist’s studio. When we turned the corner on Santa Anita Avenue and Poppyfields Drive and saw the remains of what was once my home, only shock kept me from weeping. Gone was the beautiful two-story stucco Janes Cottage house with the cathedral windows, the dark hardwood floors, the wild backyard garden. All that remained was the elevated redbrick porch and the long driveway leading nowhere. The street was eerily quiet as dozens of people in hazmat gear gingerly cleared endless piles of refuse.